2007 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice AwardsThis forum is for the 2007 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards.
You can now vote for your favorite products of 2007. This is your chance to be heard! Voting ends February 21st.

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Introduction to Linux - A Hands on Guide

This guide was created as an overview of the Linux Operating System, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter.
For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration. This book contains many real life examples derived from the author's experience as a Linux system and network administrator, trainer and consultant. They hope these examples will help you to get a better understanding of the Linux system and that you feel encouraged to try out things on your own.

The poll results reflect other people's choice, nothing more. If you think Opensuse is the winner, then it is... for you. Maybe you're looking for a another distro and then the results can give you some guidance when trying out different distro's.

The list is relatively small and biased towards already popular distro's, the number of respondents is too small for statistics and the way it's setup isn't very objective either: there's nothing to stop a group of people to promote one entry. If you'd found 500 folks to vote for Opensuse, it would have "won".

Besides, how well do the results say anything about the actual distro's? I've tried about half the distro's on the list and from those I couldn't get some to run at all, so I've worked with maybe a quarter of them. How many people have (enough) experience with all the distro's to be able to compare them? I haven't tried a few because I was shopping for a KDE centric distro and that's fine but says more about me than about a distro. Next, I could vote for only one and my choice went to Debian (well, sidux actually) because that's what I'm very happy with now but most of 2007 I've had Fedora (and Pardus, not even on the list) on my system.

I am a SimplyMEPIS fan for every day use. It is really easy to install, or if you don't want to install it, you don't have to - it can run Live. The latest version, 7.0, uses a current but stable base. The primary backing repository comes from the stable Debian branch but it also has access to the volatile - ever changing - applications, such as Email clients and Web browsers and apps with changing media content.

SimplyMEPIS is more stable than Ubuntu current releases and arguably more stable than the Long Term Support (LTS) release as well, but with a return to Debian plus custom kernel work it provides superior hardware detection and works better than most distros with wireless devices. MEPIS is a blend between all free and pragmatic use of non free components. Free stuff is used wherever possible, but the number one goal is a stable, usable desktop and MEPIS does this as well or better than anything in the industry. Worth a ten in my informal reviews and worthy of a nominal purchase of merchandise or products from the company to support the ongoing work and support of this outstanding software. I do not work for MEPIS but I am a community member that wants to see their work recognized and promoted. I cannot think of a better general purpose desktop system, either for value or for stability.

I agree with you totally. I voted Ubuntu, until I tried Mepis 7 on Monday. My goodness... It is shades better than even Linux Mint, very very powerful. I wish I could change my vote. Mepis simply does not get its recognition. I should have known better. Oh well. Hardware detection part is super true. Mounting of drives, inaccessible drive partitions is much easier and functional in mepis than any of the others except for maybe Knoppix.

Just recently Microsoft has entered the free source community. From looking at Bill Gates past history, I must admire the man for having faith that personal computers would take off; and, I must give him credit for being a shrewd businessman. How do you feel about it? How do you think this will impact the open source community? Why would Bill Gates agree to this now if Microsoft didn't stand to really capitalize from all of this? And how do you think it will affect distros and their ability to remain free?

Just recently Microsoft has entered the free source community. From looking at Bill Gates past history, I must admire the man for having faith that personal computers would take off; and, I must give him credit for being a shrewd businessman. How do you feel about it? How do you think this will impact the open source community? Why would Bill Gates agree to this now if Microsoft didn't stand to really capitalize from all of this? And how do you think it will affect distros and their ability to remain free?

You are right in saying Gates is shrewd. Steve Ballmer, who is now head of MS, is more shrewd and cunning than Gates could ever hope to be. How else could he convince open source developers to sign his 'anti-lawsuit' contract when he can't even say, several months later, now, on what patents they are infringing? You certainly have the right mindset in the respect that MS needs to be watched very closely and not trusted whatsoever. However, until Richard Stallman sells the Free Software Foundation to Microsoft, Linux distros will remain free.

I started working with computers about 3 years ago; but, I am 3 years older than Richard Stallman. I was born in 1950 and he was born in 1953. I have days that I feel like I'm on borrowed time and my time is running out. I have already lost all my close friends from school. I wasn't made to last forever and neither was Stallman. It may be what Microsoft is counting on, because I sometimes feel we'll be hard pressed to find a person as principled and dedicated to the open source community as he. Linus Tovalds is still a young man and he holds the same beliefs as Stallman. I admire him too. Without Linus no Linux. All of you doing all these wonderful things are much younger than me, and I admire what you can do and what you know. I just wanted to go back to basics just to see what it was like, so I was more that gun shy about just pointing and clicking. Younger people amaze me and I am proud to be writing this to you. Keep up the good work.

Absolutely nothing wrong with that. My apologies if I sounded differently. FWIW, I do research cli to some extent- sometimes it's just so much easier to help someone by using a terminal command. I was only pointing out that the majority of new 'Windows converts' don't have that much ambition, and neither do I when it comes to running my own machine. (maybe I've just grown lazy over the years.)

As for the rest of your post, I couldn't agree more. My thoughts, exactly.

I just want to applaud linuxquestions with a great forum in the form of this voting award. I'm a tried and true Mepis user, but gave Debian Lenny a try after reading so many messages, and looking at the results. I still think Mepis is the best desktop distro for new users coming from a windows environment. But I am now using Debian Lenny as my laptop desktop because it is a bit more responsive, and even though it is the "testing" version, I have had no problems on my HP Pavilion with it's use. The configuration of the Broadcom wireless driver was quite a chore, but I'm writing to you now using ndiswrapper and KNetworkManager with WEP encryption. Debian is a great distro for a linux user with a little bit of time to configure. Thanks to all whose input has influenced me to try it out!

I have tried about a dozen different distros on several different computers and IMHO the best distro depends largely on the computer you are trying to use it on. For example on my dual core machine Sabayon was the only distro that was able detect and use the wireless card (Asus 138), detect and see all the HD partitions, and detect the video so the desktop was displayed properly.

On my friend's slightly older single core computer Mandriva worked great with my monitor but Mandriva could not deal with his monitor (max res was 350 by 240 or something). I ended up installing Kubuntu and that worked great on his system with his monitor and his ZEW-2501 wireless adapter.

Puppy generally works great on older systems with limited ram....

Of course a Linux expert could have got any distro working on any machine but right now I don't have the skills to make that happen. Instead I just keep trying distros until one (or more) works.

I agree with you totally. I voted Ubuntu, until I tried Mepis on Monday. My goodness... It is shades better than even Linux Mint, very very powerful. I wish I could change my vote. Mepis simply does not get its recognition. I should have known better. Oh well. Hardware detection part is super true. Mounting of drives, inaccessible drive partitions is much easier and functional in Mepis than any of the others except for maybe Knoppix.

I have kept at least one copy of some version of MEPIS since 2003. On my aging Dell Dimension 4100 I have three versions: SimplyMEPIS 6.0, SimplyMEPIS 6.5, and SimplyMEPIS 7.0. I purchased 6.5 and 7.0 for sure, and for 6.0, I believe I purchased two rounds of "downloads" from the MEPIS site to support the project.

I have not seen very many distributions run KDE as well as SimplyMEPIS - maybe Slackware, plain Debian, as long as you do not install too many products and fire up too many services, and also a recent Debian Sid derivative, sidux.

I now have TWO Debian based distributions that I absolutely LOVE, SimplyMEPIS for a simple, stable, reasonably fast desktop system that is virtually effortless to configure and has a very low defect count, and the ultra cutting edge sidux, which is like having Debian Sid on steroids and mood stabilizers! Sidux actually works reliably and does a great job of masking package update issues with Debian Sid - and they often share their solutions with the Sid team unless Sid developers find a fix first.

So SimplyMEPIS is my good old reliable standby and sidux is my cutting edge desktop system. I now use multiple instances of both of them!

Who on their right mind would vote Slackware as a great desktop distribution? Well, it's openSUSE for me. Right now trying to familiarize myself with Fedora. Things look hideous in the blue side of RPM's... :/